Occasionally, I read a speculative fiction novel that has great world-building and fantastic battles, but characters who I couldn't care less about. I feel no connection to the characters, so I couldn't care less how those fantastic battles turn out.If you're a beginning writer, especially in the speculative fiction wing of the bookstore, you need to be especially careful to write bold characters who can match the great world you have built.Memorable characters are outrageous, larger than life, unpredictable, exciting ... and believable.My secret character crush is Sawyer from Lost. Man, I wish I could have written him. Bright, snappy, wicked sense of humor, anti-social to the core, and had obviously read every book in the prison library. You could hate Sawyer if you wanted, but it was hard because he was written with just enough sympathy that you didn't really want to hate him. He was believable as a con man stuck on a deserted island with a bunch of misfits and do-gooders. You were surprised when he did something good, but not overly disappointed when he followed that with something bad.Now, you know a guy like that would not survive in today's world. Someone would have slit his throat long before he ever got to the island. But the character is larger than life and exciting, so viewers connected with him and enjoyed the ride. Yet the writer tempered Sawyer's character just a bit by giving him a very believable life history -- Dad gets conned, ends up bankrupt, kills his wife and himself in front of the kid. Traumatized kid grows up to become what he hated. Stir that around a bit and -- instant sympathy for a complex and believable character.Of course, none of us wrote Sawyer. We have to write other characters who, hopefully, are just as good. How do you do that?No, seriously, I hope you know because I'm still working this out.I do know that when you decide you're going to go BIG on a personality, you have to provide balance. Consider my character Shane in Life As We Knew It. I start the story off with a gun under his chin and he's seconds away from pulling the trigger. Later, I turn him into a hero.I chose to introduce Shane at the lowest point in his life (maybe the lowest point, I'm not done with him yet) to provide an immediate connection with a character who could be hard to love. Shane is -- prickly and dark. I could allude to his depression and suicidal tendencies, but the plot didn't really have room for therapy sessions, so instead I dropped the reader right into Shane's personal crisis in the very first paragraph of the book. Within the first scene I tell the reader that Shane is a mercenary and killer who has a conscience and friends and family who care way more for him than he cares for himself, thereby suggesting there is something worth saving here. I also establish that he is darned lucky. He is a hero, even though he doesn't think of himself that way. He does things that are unexpected, that are dangerous, that could easily result in death or bodily injury, but he's got an element of luck, so when he survives, it's really not surprising. The question is ... can I keep it up throughout the series without losing the realness of the character? I don't know ... or I do and I'm not telling. You'll have to tune in to find out.Don't be afraid to give your main character unlikable qualities. We all have them. Sometimes those most despictable traits are the very thing that makes someone a hero. Also don't be afraid to show your hero in the dark night of despair or so scared he's wetting himself. Sometimes it's not brave if you're not scared, and a hero who saves the world despite being terrified will make more of a connection with your readers than one who is a hero always who can be trusted to save the day from the very beginning.One of the most heroic gestures I can think of in speculative fiction is when Sam takes the ring because he thinks Frodo has died. He doesn't want it. He never wanted it. He was there for Frodo, not for the ring. The quest is a major annoyance for him. He'd rather be gardening or cooking. But he takes the ring because he thinks it's the only right thing to do. But more, when he is reunited with Frodo and returns the ring, Sam becomes quite something remarkable. There is no other character in LOTR who carries a ring and gives it up. Galadrial continues to carry her ring. Bilbo is forced to give it up by Gandolf who has the good sense to never touch it. Frodo has it bitten off his finger by Golum who had it stolen from him by Bilbo. But Sam carries it only as long as he needs to and then returns it. It makes me wonder if he could have thrown it in the lava.In some ways, Sam is the real hero of the story -- Sam, who never wanted to leave home, who really had pretty pedestrian goals, who was only there to support Frodo -- but Frodo never would have made it to Mordor without Sam. That's a interesting lesson for me as a writer to realize that sometimes a secondary character is the real hero of the story.Don't be afraid to play around with characters and to make them really human while at the same time playing up their more outrageous qualities. The whole purpose of your first few pages is to grab the reader and make them not want to put the book down. Having a believable character who is larger than life can be one of the ways to do that.

Lela Markham is a speculative fiction author from Alaska and contributor to the Booktrap. Life As We Knew It is Book 1 of Transformation Project, an apocalyptic start to a dystopian series. The Willow Branch is Book 1 of Daermad Cycle, an epic fantasy with Celtic influences. Watch for Book 2, Mirklin Wood in the near future.

While creating a fictional world, an author must pay attention to the details that bring realism to the story. For example, traditional fantasy stories are often set in a pre-technological society while urban fantasy often takes place in modern settings. Some fantasies switch back and forth between modern and pre-technological societies. Whatever you choose to do in creating your world, you need to practice consistency.Conflict is the essence of any good story and warfare is the essence of conflict. War generally means weapons. Long knives, daggers, broad swords, and hunting knives all have distinctive purposes and certain characteristics. The weapon needs to fit the character. A small woman swinging a broadsword is not believable. Absent incredible magical powers, this petite heroine won't be able to handle such a heavy sword effectively. But what's more, she won't be able to wear that long sword in a scabbard at her waist because it will drag on the ground. A stout strong woman might be able to wear it in a back scabbard, but given the general lack of upper body strength of women, will she be able to draw the weapon effectively over her head? It might just be easier for her to wield a long knife.In Daermad Cycle, Ryanna is a half-kin nearly as tall as a Celdryan male. Kin are not human, so they are stronger and faster, plus she dresses like a man, so her opponents don't realize she's a lass. Her best skills are quickness and surprise and she can be overmatched by a larger male or if the fight goes on longer than she intended.If you're writing an urban fantasy, learn about handguns. Go visit your local gun shop or take an NRA shooting class. My instructor had about 20 or 30 different weapons for us to try. While I was familiar with some of them just by virtue of growing up in Alaska's gun culture, there were others I had never handled before.What do you know about death and dying? Most people in the Western world never see anyone actually die. Someone suggested that the state medical examiner's office could help with details on death. That was not a good option for me because that office is in another city, but I interviewed a few combat veterans from my church and the cop who lives up the street, plus I have hunted animals, so I was not wholly unfamiliar to begin with. Realistic details amps the believability of the story.What your characters wear is just as important as their weapons. Traditional fantasy characters generally wear clothing typical of the Middle Ages. You can google those images these days. The more research you do on the era that you're setting your story in, the better. You may even be surprised at some of the "modern" conveniences that appeared before the Middle Ages. Ancient Egyptians used eyeliner, eyeshadow, creams, oils, and moisturizers. China has used fireworks for centuries. If something existed somewhere prior to the Middle Ages, you can feel safe introducing it into your story. Be sure to check your facts and talk to experts in the field if you can. If you are using an alternate universe as I do in Daermad Cycle, you can mix and match eras and cultures, just be sure to have less technologically advanced societies be surprised and even frightened of the capabilities of others.Nothing adds authenticity to a story quite like bodily functions. Allow your characters to do real things like eating, sleeping, and urinating. In a world without screens on the windows, there will be flies circling their heads while they eat and bugs bite. Horses do too. When a woman spends days tramping through the woods, her hair is not going to be bright and shining and her lips won't be like pink petals -- unless of course she's magical -- or dead. And if she's ever called upon to use that long knife, those dagged sleeves on that dress are going to be a major impediment to skillful swordsmanship.The point is that magical worlds are believable only when they are respectful of reality. The more real you make the world you are creating seem, the more readers will respect consistently applied magic in that world. Remember your world won't be real to your readers until it's real to you. Invoke all five senses and stop to think from your character's POV. Always remember, its your world, but it also needs to become your reader's world so that they will willingly suspend their disbelief.

What's a sword and sorcery fantasy without magic?It's sort of like one hand clapping. It's missing a vital component that is often key in fantasy. Deciding to bring it into your story shouldn't just be a given, however. Just as you would want a functional second hand, magic needs to make sense within the world you are creating. Before you introduce it, the writer must first decide how much exists and who has it. After you decide who has magic, you need to decide where it originates.In Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom of Landover series, wizards and witches have innate power. The only mortal with power is the king, who is protected by a magic talisman. The power of the talisman is known only to the king for most of the series. Before his enemies can destroy him, they must determine the source of his power and either acquire the talisman themselves or exploit the king's weaknesses.If a fantasy society is structured around those who have magic, then you have to show why it is an advantage to have it. If magic users aren't in charge, they may be servants of those with economic or political power. Consider the traditional Arthurian legend, where Merlin is the subject of King Arthur. Merlin has the magic, but he uses it at the bidding of Arthur.Is the magic in your story a gift treasured and respected by the general populace or is it feared as an evil? The attitude of the people in your world toward magic will help you in structuring your society.In my Daermad Cycle, the Celdryans fear magic and seek to control it through the priestly organizations. The ordinary people are generally unaware of magic and terrified of it. Within their society, magic is mainly used secretly to manipulate others or political events. The Kindred, however, are naturally magical. It is common for them to have gifts and they exercise them publicly, but they do so within a regulated structure. While the Celdryans are terrified of the Kin's magic, the Kin recognize that it is the misuse of magic, made possibly by secrecy, that allows magic to be perverted. By having opposing views of magic in the series, I set up a lot of the tension between the two major races.Be sure to determine what the non-magic users in your society do to compensate for their lack. Depending on the source of magic within your story, you have a number of options. If magic comes from the gods, your non-magic population may engage in sacrifices and prayer to obtain the favor of the gods. If the magic is evoked through the use of artifacts, there may be fights and quests to seek out the most powerful talismans. If it is innate, you can show your ordinaries seeking to curry favor with the mages.While we tend to think of magic as being a large benefit to those who have it, it can add realism and depth to your story to show the downsides. In Kate Elliott's Spirit Walker Trilogy, the magister have great power, but their magic comes at a price. Cold mages cannot live with ordinaries because their innate magic kills combustion, which is a real problem in an alternate Europe still in the grips of an ice age. Moreover, they cannot themselves live for extended periods of time without warmth, so they must devise homes that are heated by distant combustion. That weakness adds believability to the world Elliott has created.Although you can certainly create a magical system from your own imagination, the magic systems of human civilizations can be a great resource. You can mix and match and totally change what you learn, but the more you know, the more ideas you'll have. Strive for consistency. I use a continuity notebook to keep track of who does what to whom and how it is done. Every time magic -- or a certain type of magic, because you can have more than one if you are organized -- appears in your story, you should follow the same rules, so as not to confuse your readers.A magical system is a wonderful, almost required, addition to any fantasy, greatly enhanced by considering all angles before a writer sets out to include it.

Lela Markham is the author of The Willow Branch, Book 1 of the Daermad Cycle, a series deeply steeped in magic.

Speculative fiction is built on world-building. There is probably no greater skill for writers in this broad group of genres. Think Tolkein, Heinlein, Brandon Sanderson, George RR Martin, Orson Scott Card and a plethora of others.As a fantasy author, I've spent time studying how the greats went about it in hopes that my product might be as good ... or even a pale imitation. Last week I touched on the broad outlines of the craft. Today, I'm drilling down into the specifics.It starts with Defining the Physical WorldDefining your locale is an excellent place to start. Setting ideas can come from newspapers, magazines, TV shows, a walk in the woods, or a drive through a city.For fantasy writers, it's often all about the map, which readers often demand to be included in the book. I suggest that writers ought to consider a map for just about any story they're writing. Your readers may never see it and they may not miss it, but it is incredibly helpful to know the layout of the house where the action takes place and, if the characters venture outside the building, having a rough sketch of the surrounding area helps to keep you, the writer, oriented. When I do this, I scribble in street names, inns, the palace and the brothel -- pretty much any place that involves my main characters. If the action is in a rural location, I lay out farms, caravanseries, duns, etc. My readers may not need this information, but the more detail I insert into the story, the more real the setting seems to the reader. In addition to a map, you may want to jot down descriptions of places you will need to use in your story. What building materials are used in homes? Do they differ depending on the status of the occupants?What about foods eaten by your characters? Is it the standard fare of bread, cheese and tough meat or the rich board found in George Martin's Game of Thrones?What sort of plants exist in your world? And how do you describe them? Is an oak tree called an oak tree or an acorn tree? Where do these trees grow? Nothing is more jarring to me as a reader from a northern state (Alaska) than to have an author put a tree in a latitude where I know they can't grow. Just as there are no magnolia trees in Alaska and no black spruce in Georgia, similar plants have ranges in the world of Daermad because I don't want to jar a reader out of the willing suspension of disbelief.Give some thought to clothing worn by the characters. I seek out artists' renders of old Celtic and medieval garb to use in Daermad Cycle, but there's also a logic to what northern people wear as opposed to what southern people wear. Again, my readers may not even recognize the differences, but my adherence to my own world rules allows me to impart realism into the story in a subtle, yet satisfying way.The more details you jot down, the better you (the writer) are be able to track how your world operates and the greater your readers' engagement with your speculative world will be.Lela Markham is a speculative fiction author of The Willow Branch (an epic fantasy) and Life As We Knew It (an apocalyptic). Both are first in series. You can find her blatherings, author interviews and more at her main blog. This posting is brought to you courtesy of the Booktrap -- an authors' marketing cooperative.

Have you ever wondered how the speculative fiction greats created their realistic of fantasy worlds? Me, too.Yes, I’m a fantasy author, but I stand in awe of writers like JRR Tolkein, Katharine Kerr, Brandon Sanderson and Kate Elliott in their ability to make the magical seem real. Some of them have been kind enough to blog about how they do it and I have learned a lot from that, which I now pass on to you.The world we live in is magical. You may not realize that because it seems to familiar, but creating a fantasy world means building a world based upon reality and making sure that the reader knows the rules of that world. For readers to accept and continue to read a story, the write must make them believe in the world the characters inhabit. Characters must remain true to the rules of that world throughout the story for readers to accept what is happening to them.J. R. R. Tolkien depicted Middle Earth as a world so real that it has become a classic upon which so many others are based. Tolkien created Middle-earth, the lovable hobbits, the psychic elves and the irrepressible dwarves with incredible description and attention to details. The story contains all the elements of a traditional fantasy -- a bumbling hero, an enchanted talisman, dark magic versus the good wizard, and an quest. It’s the gold standard in fantasy fiction.How to attain something similar in your own writing? It’s not magic. I know I don’t have a wand. I did, however, study about how the greats created worlds their readers readily accepted.The setting must be believable.·Characters should dress appropriately for the period and culture.·Weapons must be appropriate to the world. ·If magic is involved, the writer should define the rules of magic and stick with them throughout their tale.That looks like a perfect table of contents for a series, so see you next week.Lela Markham is a multi-genre author who has published two books so far. Check out her website to find more of her writing.

The Agony of Criticism

There are writers and there are authors. Unlike some in the publishing field, I am not convinced that all that separates a writer from becoming an author is publishing a book. I think some unpublished writers are authors in progress while some published writers will never be authors.It's a painful truth, but one does not simply sit down and write a good novel. There's research, there's writing, there's rewriting and editing ... and more than anything else, there is critique.How you accept critique is part of what separates writers and authors.I've been scribbling stories since I was 12. I had some critique on my fiction in high school from my teachers, but for most of the decades between then and publishing my first novel I was writing fiction for my own amazement. Then I decided I really wanted to advance a book to publication and I started to submit it to friends to read.I guess my friends love me. They all said pretty glowing things about the manuscript that would become the seedbed for Daermad Cycle. Somehow I knew that wasn't completely honest. I went one step further and submitted it to the writers site Authonomy. Mostly I got good reviews and that felt a little bit more honest because these people didn't know me. Some of the reviewers gave minor critique -- moves a bit slowly, takes a long time to get to the point, it's awfully long -- but I wasn't really sure what to do with that critique.Then it happened. Somehow I attracted the attention of a notorious misanthrope on the site and he (or that iteration was a she, I think) decided to critique my book.If you've never been run over by a Mac truck, I don't recommend it.I knew this was a mean, mean person, but her words bit deep. She (or he) really hated my book. Worse, though a truly miserable human being, this person was also a great writer.There are three ways to handle that sort of critique:

throw the project in the trash bin where the critic suggested ... thereby proving that you're a writer and not an author in progress;

ignore the critique and keep the project as it is ... also suggesting that you may not be an author in progress;

learn from the critique what is worth learning.

The author in progress does the third thing. After I got done being mad and sad in cycles, I resolved to come back to the critique in a while (that turned out to be three months) and mine it for what was worthwhile. Because this person had a history of being deleted from the site, I printed out the critique and put it away for later consumption. In the meantime, more nicer reviews came in that sort of agreed (in a nice way) with the mean review. I recognized that this mean critic had given me solid advice in a truly despicable manner and her critique was really not substantially different from the more soft-soap critique of the nicer reviews. He was brutally honest and that was exactly what I needed.I went back to the book and applied the critique in a reasonable manner. I broke the manuscript into smaller more manageable portions (thereby creating a series, which is almost never a bad thing in epic fantasy). I was honest about how slow it was and I resolved to change that. I included death and mayhem much earlier than I was comfortable with. I excised the info dumps and limited the beautifully detailed descriptions I like. I added more complex characters, including some actual bad guys. And I got a better book, which got better reviews, but I also gained the confidence to pick a date to publish. You see, buried in that really mean review, was a off-hand statement that I had to mull for a long while and when I came back to it after the rewrite of the book that would become The Willow Branch, Book 1 of the Daermad Cycle, I realized that it was a very subtle compliment. Nasty guy actually thought there was a kernal of something in the book worth saving.But if I'd done what I thought he was advising -- burn the manuscript, eat dirt and die -- I never would have come to that realization and either one of two things would have happened. Either The Willow Branch never would have been published or ... I shudder to think this -- the book entitled that would have been a mediocre book that should not have been published.One of the major things separating writers from authors in progress is how they handle critique. All critique is useful to those who are willing to use it.Lela Markham is the author of two published books The Willow Branch (Book 1 of Daermad Cycle), an epic fantasy, and Life As We Knew It (Book 1 of Transformation Project), an apocalyptic headed toward dystopia. You can find other writings at Aurorawatcherak - https://aurorawatcherak.wordpress.com/

Today's interview is with J.S. Bailey, writer of supernatural suspense. Welcome to the blog.It’s an honor to be here, Lela!Tell us something about yourself.I’ve lived in the Cincinnati area for my entire life. It seems that Cincinnati has become part of my identity. (If people ask me where I’m from, I don’t tell them I’m from Ohio even though that’s the state where I live.) I don’t think I could ever live anywhere else—though I do love to travel!I feel the same way about Alaska. There are many lovely places in the world and I like to visit them, but I always want to come home.I live with my husband and two rambunctious cats named Thai and Chai. My husband has been incredibly supportive of my writing journey, and if not for his encouragement, I might not have ever completed my first novel.What was your first story and how old were you?To be honest? I don’t know. My earliest stories date from when I was in kindergarten. I have no memory of making them. I would put them together myself and draw all my own pictures to go with the story. One was about a bear that went to school. Another one written a few years later was about a sentient pink rainbow that followed people around.I wish I could remember what first possessed me to pick up a pen and write. What I do know is that I haven’t stopped since. I started writing more seriously in high school and had my first novel, The Land Beyond the Portal, published while in college. In all, I’ve been writing for about 21 years.Your website says you dabbled in science fiction until you found supernatural. What was your first taste that drew you in that direction?As a teenager I was very much into Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, Frank Herbert’s Dune series, and Anne McCaffrey’s Pern books, so I assumed that those were the sort of things I would write. For my 20th birthday, my future sister-in-law gave me two Dean Koontz books. I hadn’t read any Koontz before so I was hesitant to read them, but when I did, my mind was blown away. Instead of taking place on other worlds, Koontz’s stories featured extraordinary things happening in our own world.So I decided I could do that, too!Stephen King says he writes horror because he was always sure something really scary was hiding under his bed when he was a kid. Do you feel that there is a supernatural world just beyond our sight that most people just don't see?I do believe that. However, the only things I’ve ever found lurking under my bed are my cats.So when did you decide to be an author?Again, I don’t know. I think that the desire to write was encoded in my DNA. I did dabble in various endeavors before deciding that the only thing I wanted to do career-wise was to write.Tell us about the books.Servant, my most recent novel, is the first book of The Chronicles of Servitude. Bobby Roland, the protagonist, has been plagued with premonitions of disaster ever since his father’s untimely death six years earlier. Whenever someone he knows is going to be killed or grievously harmed, he’s forewarned about it and has to figure out how to save them. He unknowingly places himself in the line of fire when he rescues the Servant, a man chosen by God to exorcise demons from the possessed. Bobby must ultimately choose between saving others and saving himself. Book 2, Sacrifice, will be released in 2015.Rage’s Echo was my second novel and is currently unavailable, as I’m republishing it. It will have a lovely new cover and interior! It tells the tale of Jessica, a young paranormal investigator who has the ghost of a murder victim follow her home from an investigation one night. Jerry, the ghost, yearns to move on to heaven but also wants to get revenge on the people who killed him. I had entirely too much fun writing this novel!The Land Beyond the Portal is also unavailable, but instead of just getting a new cover I’m rewriting it from the beginning to reflect my current writing style. It’s about a teenager named Laura who awakens in a snowed-in house with no memory of who she is. While exploring the house, she finds a room in the basement that transports her into another land. So not only does she have to relearn her identity, she has to find her way back. The Land Beyond the Portal will likely be re-released in 2016.I’ve also published four short stories. Vapors and Weary Traveler are standalones, Solitude is a prequel to Servant, and Rochelle’s Pizza Run is a short story sequel to The Land Beyond the Portal and appears in the anthology Through the Portal. My fifth short story, There We Will Be, is due to release in the anthology Call of the Warrior on May 25.What you are passionate about?My husband. Stories. Mexican food. Learning new things. The internet. More Mexican food. Burritos.What is something you cannot live without?Would it be redundant for me to mention burritos here, too?Not at all. I'm partial to egg rolls myself. Your website also says you believe good should always triumph over evil. How does that work in your way of thinking?As a Christian, I believe that “good” has greater power than evil. I think our society focuses too much on the evil in our world and too little on the good things. While my stories often show depraved characters committing evil deeds, I will never allow him or her to win in the end. Because how depressing would a story like that be?I'm going to drop you off for a month in a remote Alaskan cabin. It's summer so you don't have to worry about freezing to death and I'm providing the food and bug spray (an Alaskan necessity). What do you bring with you? What do you do while you're there? And if you bring books, what are they?I would have to bring my husband. I’d definitely bring a camera because whenever I go on vacation I have to take dozens of pictures. I would probably go exploring and try writing longhand in a notebook. As for books, I’d probably bring a few Dean Koontz and Ted Dekker paperbacks with me. They’re my faves.Links, author site(s), cover art, author pic, etc.www.jsbaileywrites.comwww.facebook.com/jsbaileywriteshttp://twitter.com/jsbailey_authorwww.goodreads.com/jsbaileywww.amazon.com/author/jsbailey

Anyone who has read my books knows that I write from the male perspective a fair bit. My reasons are complex, but it's probably owing to growing up in Alaska where there was a 4:1 ratio of men and women. It is a place where men are men and women win the Iditarod, so even my female characters tend to hunt, fish and chop wood. If there is a girly character in my writing, it's rarely a central character because I struggle with girly females.Regardless, men and women are different and if you don't know that, it may be negatively affecting your writing. Females tend to write like girls (hence the majority of romance novelists being female) and men tend to write like men (and pen the better epic fantasies -- usually). There's nothing wrong with that, unless you want to market books to humans in general or create characters of the opposite sex, because trust me, there is no such thing as gender neutral writing and attempts to make it so are cautionary tales in why we shouldn't go there because we give up a major tool for creating tension and nuance within our novelsI'm not saying anything that scientists haven't already found ample evidence to support. Men and women are different at a biological and brain architecture level. Those hardwired gender difference have a huge impact on how we write, but as I showed in the first paragraph, that is also influenced by culture and temperament. There are, believe it or not, male romance novelists. They usually write under a female pseudonym and their novels sell just as well as the ones written by females. There are other writers who seem to transcend gender. Kate Elliott, who is one of my favorite epic fantasy writers, managed to make me forget that a girl was writing Prince of Dogs, while, in the Cold Magic series, her female-centric narrative is perfectly believable.How does she manage that? I don't know, but I do know how I attempt a similar outcome.I recognize that men and women are different. We even use different vocabulary. Women like personal pronouns -- I, you, we and are also much more descriptive and effusive in our language. We play with adjectives. Men like active verbs and concrete figures and tend to limit descriptors to numbers.Nothing separates men and women more than our analogies. A man warms to the idea of an motor that roars like a lion while a woman prefers something that purrs like a kitten. In epic fantasy, men and women often live very different lives. A male soldier is likely to draw metaphors from his own life -- to think of horses, swords and armor. A female seamtress is more likely to think in terms of needle, thread, coat and shoe.Men think in terms of accomplishments -- a battle won, a disease conquered, a city built. Women focus on relationships and emotions. This is really evidence in the entertainment we choose. Men tend to like explosions in their movies while women want a happily-ever-after. In writing novels, male writers tend to follow the men off to war while female writers tend to focus on the family coping at home.At a writer's workshop last winter, we were asked to write a paragraph describing a photo (depicting a cowboy breaking a bronco) and then to write the same description from the perspective of the other gender. The results were an interesting survey. All of the paragraphs from the male perspective focused on the excitement and sense of accomplishment in training the horse while most of the female-perspective paragraphs focused on the fear of injury and the sadness of the animal's terror. Mine was the exception to the female perspective rule -- I wrote with the guys, probably because my mother used to break broncos in Montana as a teenager and I grew up with those stories.If you're writing for a purely male or female audience, it's helpful to know these difference, but it's vital to be aware of them if you're writing for humans in general. I write epic fantasy and apocalytpics. It's important for me to blend and balance these two genders to be more inclusive of both men and women. I try to include both domestic scenes and battles. My female characters care about things my male characters do not. Lydya, an important character in the Daermad Cycle, struggles to spend time with her children and cares that soldiers are getting serving girls pregnant. Meanwhile, Padraig notes how much taller the walls of Clarcom have become in the years he's been away.One of the most essential focuses for a writer who wants to be accurate with both male and female characters is dialogue. Recognizing differences in gender communication can help to create more believable characters that ring true with readers. Linguists have found that women state preferences rather than make demands, ask questions rather than make statements, and we apologize for our difficult decisions. Men use more commanding and aggressive language, use more sarcasm, insults and sexual innuendo and also hold their personal information much closer than women do.Of course, our differences are not all the same. Not all women think and behave alike and the same is true for men. As a tom-boy raised in Alaska by a tom-boy farm girl and a man who paid the bills as a professional chef, I am well aware that there is considerable variation within the genders, but their differences as a woman somewhat in touch with her masculine side and a man somewhat in touch with his feminine side provided conflict in their relationship. While some in society consider it politically correct to write men and women as the same in novels, we are not the same and it is that difference that provides opportunity for conflict and nuance. Just as you would research a character from another culture, you should research gender differences so that you can exploit, enhance and highlight the differences to make a more compelling story.

What goes into building a character?Name, yes! Physical description ... not so much.As I go about my life, I rarely think of my physical description and I warrant neither do most of you. I know I'm so many inches tall and weigh this many pounds, that I have dark hair and blue eyes, but I don't really think about any of that as I live my life. I might think about a coworker as really tall for a woman, as having extraordinarily beautiful eyes or really luxurious hair, but I don't think they are so many inches tall, about this weight, with curly black hair and green eyes. And if I meet them on a regular basis, their extraordinary traits become part of who they are, not a description to give unless someone else asks me to describe them.Providing a physical description within the first paragraphs of introducing a character is a standard convention in American novels that I have discovered missing in European novels ... and I don't miss it. At some point I create a picture in my head of the character regardless if the writer provides that little paragraph of description or not.It's made me think a lot about perspective in my writing. Why would Ryanna (my principle female character in The Willow Branch) describe herself physically to herself? Her friends might notice she's tall or beautiful, but she would think of herself as relatively ordinary. After all, she spend all of her time with herself. In one of my works-in-progress, the main character Peter is an exceptionally handsome man, but he's also a broken individual who is trying to overcome a lot of well-deserved self-hate. It would be uncharacteristic for him to look in a mirror and think of himself as handsome. When women give him an admiring glance, he thinks "Do they hate me for my past?" not "I'm all that." Similarly, while a woman might find him exceptionally attractive, his heterosexual male friend probably wouldn't. I know this because I have asked my husband to rate male actors in movies on handsomeness scales and discovered that his definition of masculine attractiveness is very different from mine. He tends to rate other men about how he would rate a car or a horse -- strong-looking is attractive, maybe if they have really bright eyes he'd notice, but a kissable mouth -- shudder.Because I often write from more than one character perspective, I might introduce a character from their own point of view sans physical description and then "turn the camera around" from the POV of another character, but these are the things to think about when you do that. A lover might admire the cut of a fine pair of slacks on a man, but his mother probably shouldn't ... unless she's a tailor.I am not saying to never describe your characters' physical attributes. I am saying to avoid the traditional romance novelist info dump because it's overdone and often illogical. Think about what you're doing when you're writing and see if perhaps you can spend more time developing actual characters with personality rather than just physical characteristics.

Do you spend time worrying what your friends will think about your writing? Does that fear paralyze what you really want to write? When you told a friend, did they look at you as if you'd grown another head.Don't take any criticism personally or it will cripple you.To be a great writer you need to write whatever it takes to make the story work. Let it all hang out. Its got to be real, its got to be passionate, its got to move your reader and connect with them.Don't imagine that your first draft will do this but each draft will come closer. It needs to resonate with you and the reader. You need to own this shit. It's your story and you need to tell it your way.So many writers worry that their mother or father will pick up their book and be shocked. Stop destroying your creativity and stop that voice in your head telling you that you can't write this or that. This is life as you imagine it, warts and all. Be honest, be genuine and readers will love that.

Sure there are risks you can't please all readers all of the time. Sometimes you will get negative comments from strangers or friends. You'll need to grow a tough outer skin and brush these off.Enjoy what you do. When you create it's an exhilarating experience which is hard to beat.